When Hard Obedience Becomes our Pearls of Joy

 As a teacher, I sometimes encounter students who come against something difficult for them to complete, and their reaction is oftentimes anguished frustration.

As a Christian, I encounter my own string of difficulties that can equally frustrate me, making me grouchy to say the least.

But as someone who pursues God, I imagine he prefers to give us the hard tasks, because it is through hard obedience that we grow the most in our walk with him.

I love words, so when I think about the idea of something being hard, I counter it with the opposite. Soft? Easy? I imagine soft, easy obedience is doing something that feels comfortable, therefore making it pleasant for us. But much like a pearl that is formed only through an irritant, I imagine my own life can only become beautiful in God’s eyes if I am irritated by the sin that so easily entangles.

Philippians 2: 5-11 says that we should try to have the same attitude as Christ who didn’t try to get to the top of the ladder and sit equally with God. Instead, he willingly left the plush life of heaven and stepped into the harsh confines of a human body, and then even went to the cross for a death more horrific than we can imagine. But through his death, his hard obedience, came something extraordinarily beautiful.

I don’t know about you, but I think I may have had a bad attitude through the whole dying on a cross ordeal. But Jesus didn’t. And God’s word says that we need to emulate Christ; so when life asks us to do the hard things in obedience to what God has designed for our lives, we should not only do them, but do them with a gracious attitude.

Then we shall behold the priceless beauty of a pearl emerging because we chose to fight against the irritant with hard obedience and a joyful heart.

An Open Letter to Fellow Educator Friends

In July of 2020, I resigned from MCHS after 13 years in public education, and with great turmoil deep in the pit of my stomach, I packed up my belongings into the bed of two trucks (yes, two-you don’t realize how much of your life gets transplanted into the classroom in so many ways even beyond personal belongings) and drove away from a job I deeply loved. Crossing that threshold one last time held more crossroads than I even realized at the time.

Life shifted quickly as I moved into a new position for Pinehaven Christian School and began a journey into the private sector of education where homeschoolers abound. I was met with friends who offered insight and encouragement and welcomed me into their homes to talk all things education and life and purpose, and the conversations paralleled the countless ones I was blessed with in the halls and rooms of Mount Carmel High School.

As life settled in, I began to notice a closed door into the public sector that I naively assumed would remain open. It had likely shut the moment I crossed that threshold of MCHS, drug my belongings into the basement of my home to be stored, and began to teach for Pinehaven, but I suppose I was just too busy to notice it at first. And I fully realize I asked for it; the choice was mine and no one else is to blame. But now that it stares me down daily, I find myself in an array of reactions.

Some days I want to bust it down and force my way back into the hearts of public educator friends. I want to tell them that I still firmly believe in all they do and am perhaps an even bigger fan than they could realize because like them, I too have walked the oftentimes daunting road of doing my very best to make a small difference in an ever indifferent sea of teenage storms. I want to shower them with encouragement for doing the hard things every single day by showing up and giving their best even as it seems futile. I want to tell them the truth of how much they are loved and appreciated for their endless sacrifices to the youth of our communities. In short, I want to say, “I see you, and I thank you, even from afar.”

Other days I want to just sit at the door and listen in, longing to be part of their comings and goings and belong once again to their fold. But that door seems to have shut when I signed the resignation letter and walked off the stage of public education and into the private sector. Please know that I don’t at all blame my public educator friends for the shut door; in fact, my educator friends who know me personally still readily accept me. I do, however, find a grave distance between private educators and public educators at large, and I readily see it is a product of our culture that I too have fallen under. Honestly, both sides are to blame.

For some reason, we have all developed this mentality of them vs. us when it comes to private vs. public education. I find it likely that the public educators think the private sector sees themselves as superior. In truth, the homeschool mom or the me’s of this world likely spend most days second-guessing our attempts because we too find our jobs are hard and require endless sacrifices for the youth of our own little communities. I also find it likely that the homeschool moms can radiate pride where humility should abound, further inciting division. I also recognize that not all homeschool moms are the same mold, nor are all public school educators, and a whole other array of reactions too lengthy to discuss here have widened the no-man’s-land between the two worlds.

As I have stood in both realms, I can’t help but see the unnecessary chasm that divides our worlds. The honest truth is we all have a heart to help kids reach their full potential; it is just the specifics of the environment that look a little different. At the end of the day, we all love the students before us and want to do whatever we can to move them towards a better future. 

So to my homeschool educator moms and my public educator friends, I am asking us all to consider the larger perspective and make a move toward an open door where we all work together knowing that neither side deems themselves superior. Instead, we should encourage one another in our similar endeavors and do our very best to collectively build a better community by offering hope and promise for all students in our midst, because every student really does matter, regardless of their individual educational environments.

One More Time

This is not our first rodeo. We have traveled this road more times than I can count.

As I walked once again away from the ‘kissing corner,’ my mind replayed a thousand images of times spent watching her as they wheel her down the hall out of our presence while my heart cried out within. Hold it all together though for her sake. She needs all the strength she can muster to just make it through one more time.

One more time. Will you allow her that today, Lord? Will you allow us to come out of this day on the other side with her still by our side? Or is today the day?

I lost it hard yesterday. I have tried and tried to hold it all together but it just became too much. And as your divine details kept unfolding, I fell apart. I hope it was a beautiful mess; it really just felt like desperate chaos. 

So my mind keeps replaying all these images of times you have asked me to hold it all together as I had to hold her up. But if I am honest, it seems so unfair.

Why should a 16-year-old daughter have to wipe the puke off the floor after helping her mom clean off her feces and settle into the madness of her mind while she does her best to just lie still?  Why did you make me see her that night as she walked right into me and had no idea who I even was? Why did I spend countless hours taking care of her when I could barely take care of myself? 

That one night stole so much. I lost my mother much too young, only to spend more hours in a hospital or doctor’s office than most people do in a lifetime combined, and I am only 41. I know the drill all too well. The nurse will come in and ask a thousand questions, interrupted by the surgical nurse or the anaesthesiologist or the surgeon or labs. If I could cry a tear for every drop of blood I have watched them steal from her weakened soul, I would flood the hearts of too many. 

My heart feels the flood. Like I am holding up the dam by a measly whisk of breath and at any moment I know it will all come crashing down if I dare to even steal a whisper begging for mercy.

It leaked yesterday. For a few small moments as a dear friend held me close, I let some of it out. But how do I account for twenty-four years of dammed emotions because she couldn’t be my strength. I had to be hers.

I am trying my best today to be her strength, and to just hold tight. But, God, it is harder today than normal. For just a few moments, I need to be a kid again. A 16-year-old girl who is free to laugh and live and have a mom who will take care of it all. But I am not a kid anymore, and the innocence stolen will forever play on repeat in my mind every time I have to once again sit here in these forsaken waiting rooms. God, I have grown weary of waiting. When will you let it end? Or better yet, when will we get a new beginning?

I guess I could say I wish life had a reset, and we could start anew, back to the beginning. We could go back to the 1995 Lesa who was young and free without a care in the world. But then I wouldn’t have You. And as hard as today is, You really are enough. So I trust in you to be enough in me today. Because I need you. Oh, I need you. Every hour of every day. I need you to be enough in me. yae.

One more time.

Moving Mountains

One more time, one last time.

Time ticks tediously into the winds of insanity.  But all you really want is to hold it somehow still in your hands just long enough to feel it, to own it.  But it slips. Oh, how it slips away and away and away and yet you hold it, waterfalling cascades dancing around you as you turn this way and that to just hold on.

Just hold on.  You wonder why you even try.  But yet you do. The very thought of addiction benumbs your soul and yet out of embers and ashes you peer, wishing desperately to grasp one wisp of yellowed shine.  The dawn of a new day never knocks, or maybe it did and you just didn’t hear it.

Why are you addicted to the insanity of normal?

The demons of normality are beckoning to be your best ally.  Grasp hold of their sickening web and then you can break free to live an enchanted life, to unshackle the slave of your thoughts, break free, just be.  

But you sense you are less than enough.  So just this one time, just this one moment, you shall reject the heart’s earnest cry to move mountains and one more time, just this one more time, you shall remain.  Stay the course, hold your head high, be who they want you to be, who they need you to be.

Being for them breaks who you are.

You need more.

You need heights unsoared and valleys unkempt and struggles more real and yet more ensnaring than you can handle, but the chains of being what they expect are more wretched yet.

Maybe it’s time.  Maybe those demons are really just angels who need their own wings; they cannot fly if they cannot unlatch.  

They can’t control you anymore because . . .

Maybe it is time.

One last time for them, one more last time for you.

And as you fly, they shall also forever flight in the foreground because those who wonder are never really lost.

Those who fight and flight are dancing together on the face of their failures, and you can step in time, join the dance, be alive.  

Because how will you ever know what to believe if you don’t go just this one time.

Just this one time.

Even if you fail.  Even if you crash and burn.  It shall still be beautiful. . .

For you can only ever be a beautiful disaster.

Homeward Bound

It almost always hits somewhere in the Dakotas.  Driving hard to make the miles, time rolling slower than paint drying in the hot, humid summer air, and I enter a lengthy haze.  From inside, I am quiet. I have nothing to say. No words could begin to express what is happening in my heart. Nothing in me can muster the energy; all my reserve is pounding away against the flood of endless uncertainty and it is all I can do to just breathe.  Breathe in. Breathe out. Survive.

I would like to stay in the haze.  At least it is better than coming out on the other side ready to tackle another year in the hot hells of southern Illinois.  The endless tasks with little return of effort. Slaving away at work, farm, and home for the tidbits of recompense slowly dispersed like morsels as I eat away at the sticky, messy dough desperately eager for that next text message or email from the student who might reach out long enough to give me a sip of water in my dry desert.  They are always worth it, but could there be more?

A haven of rest awaits just round the corner.  I find it come July, but now it is August, and my heart yearns to return through that haze to the other side, to find my soul in the mountains of Montana where you will plant me.  Will you plant me? I want to grow, but it seems so hard here in the shadows of corn and pork-capital of the world. The capital of comfort lures me to buy into all the things I cannot afford, yet purchase after purchase finds me wasting away yet in this desert land.  The thick, humid air can be so very suffocating; I can hardly breathe.

Father, help me breathe.  Remind me as I replant yet again here in this wasteland that this is the plan You have for me.  Is this the only plan You have? My heart yearns for something more, but something more comes at such a cost, and I only want it if You would have it for me, for us.

Coming out from the haze is so damned difficult.  I stay there as long as I possibly can, heart revolting for the deemed departure that You demand.  By the time we hit Iowa, I have emerged, but with each passing time, it becomes more difficult to gather back up all the pieces of my heart.  I feel like humpty dumpty who cannot quite put myself back together again.

Father, put me back together.  Make me whole so I can tackle all You have in store for me here.  Bring peace and passion and purpose to this next year that lies ahead.  

And maybe if You would think it is okay, grant me a plane ticket come March-to teach, to breathe, to revive this heart of mine.

In all my wanderings and revolts, I really do just want what You want for me.  Show me Your way, and I promise to go where You go.

Trust and Obey.  There really is no other way.  

Trust that I AM

Some days I have it together.  Some days I do not.  And other days, like today, I am Jacob wrestling with God for all I am worth. 

Lunchtime.  I am sitting in my room, door locked, lights off, listening to Bethel Worship.  I play the song You Came.  Tears flowing, I am begging God to please come, pleading for him to whisk his breathe across my cheek, letting me feel His presence.  Speak to me...please........

Suppertime.  I am fixing soup, listening again to Bethel Worship.  With no choosing on my end, a different song plays, and this one reminds me that He is with me, even when I don't feel it. . . Mike drop-walk away.  Tears again.  I know He wasn't actually the one singing, but He was.  He spoke directly to my heart, reminding me that He is alive and well in my soul, so it can be well with my soul.

Trust Me.

I still feel like my hip is out of socket, but my heart can rest anew because He showed up, just like He always does, and spoke His Truth-I AM that I AM.

sHe

She was too young with a veiled clarity for the blackened white in the midst of swirling greys, but we probably shouldn’t blame her-a habit of youth. She blames herself enough already.

You came.  Soft, slow, seducing.  So she gave.  Every last ounce of her heart and soul, and then the final prized token of her unfailing devotion so you would finally know her love.  Her first and final hail mary.

She never was the same.

Times broken pieces to put humpty dumpty back together again, and just when she thought all was healed, you dropped in again.  

Why here of all places?  The teeter-totter of mind over emotion, knowing this is the exact place she wants you to be but your arrival seemingly caused the ground to fall away beneath her and she doesn’t quite know how to get back up.  The jekyl of wanting you to know Christ like you have never known him before but the hyde of wishing you would have chosen somewhere else to take your pursuing heart.  

Why would God do such a thing?

Yes, I know.  You have great plans for me.  Really, You do.  And it is crazy insane how You are doing a good thing in me through all the debased pits of my weeping heart.  So I do hear You.  Really, I do.

You know how I have struggled with this for some time now.  You know how I want so much for this to not be a big deal, but then within seconds it is erupting inside bigger than life and then I just don’t know how to breathe.  Spirit and flesh battling inside for the final victory over how I will go on with life now that his presence is in my midst.  

Life does go on and we live in the here and now.  I cannot recreate the past with all its veiled clarity, but I can use the vivid picture You have revealed today to move past this moment.  I am not defined by my past.  I must trust that You alone can show Him truth and think not of the me he knew, but choose instead to see the me You have made me to be.  But really, it is not me at all he needs to see; it is You we all need.  

I will choose in this moment to step out of my pit of pity, for pity really is the base for my wallowed pit.  And I will live in the spirit over the flesh, knowing You clothe me with righteousness and see not all the wretched shame of my past.  When I stand in Your fathomless glory, I fall to pieces inside because I am reminded of how very unworthy I am.  His presence reminds me of my guilt-choosing his hail mary over the bloodied sacrifice of my Jesus.  But I no longer live that life of lies, and though it haunts me still daily, I am not defined by the veiled past.  Satan would try to tell me differently, but as we sang today, when the lies speak louder than the truth, remind me I belong to you.  

I cried a lot today.  Weeping for the past that I cannot alter and for how much You love me in spite of me.  And if I am honest, weeping also for all the he’s whose hearts I played around with in my downspiralling implosion of youth.   I was a blackened mess.  But You pulled me from the muck and mire and gave me a new name, so I can either sink into the regret of the past or embrace the hope of a future You offer freely, a gift I can never earn but desperately need.

I will take your offering.  I will kneel at the altar of Your love because it is the only place I can be whole again, and I will gladly welcome him to do the same even if it is right beside me, because that is Your desire, and all I want is to have Your heart.

Victim of Love

I once had a student who wrote about her molester.  Raw, tender, beautiful young girl whose deacon touched her in bad places.  Told her not to tell.  My throat screams injustice as my stomach churns with the thought of the injustice she has endured.

She was a victim of child molestation.  But is she really a victim?

Racism breeds its hot hatred year after year, day after day.  Moment after moment we are bombarded with the clashing tension.  Blacks demanding a voice in a world that has historically oppressed and whites screaming back that we live only in the present and cannot be held accountable for the sins of our fathers.  Spouting ignorance about the realities of cultural degradation runs rampant in all of us.  We are all victims of our upbringings, buying into the abcs of our youth.  But are we really victims?

Daniel and I talked about this the other night.  Black, white, rich, poor-so few actually change from what they have known.  Stuck in the cycles of the familiar, we may venture a bit from the nucleus but fail to find implosion that launches us into brand new spheres of orbits.  

I guess I see it like this.  It is pretty easy for me to sit in my comfortable life and throw stones at someone else and tell them their poverty or their depravity is their own fault because if they would only work harder they would rise above their situation when the honest reality is even the richest white man rarely moves beyond his own situation in which he was raised to fill.  We often live impressed under the cultural norms of whatever life has looked like day in day out.  We fail to move beyond what we know because we are victims who lack courage and strength and perseverance to make a change.  But does it have to be like this?  Are we really victims?

As a Christian, my default is to take all questions to the context of how God would answer this question.  And as often happens, he points me to the cross.

Jesus was the ultimate victim.  Bruised and beaten for his perfection, outcast for belonging to God, rejected for refusing to follow the norm, he died for me to pay my price and set an example for me to fall hard into.  From every angle I look, Jesus was a victim.  But He would deny every ounce of that claim.  He says we are only victims if we choose the flesh.  When we choose the spirit, we are never a victim.  Through His Spirit, we step outside the flesh into a life where nothing that happens to our flesh can destroy what He has done in our Spirit, and it is then that all of us-black, white, rich, poor-move beyond victimization and into abundant life.  

Blacks and white alike, if they choose secular over spirit, are all victims and frustrate progression of life because living a victim leaves us unable to make a change, choosing instead to displace responsibility and live stagnantly blaming others with no hope of rising above our circumstances.

My student is no different.  Her flesh was victimized-cruel, heartless beast of a man who took advantage of her.  Every part of me cries sorrow for what has happened to her, but I would do her an injustice if I simply offered a tissue with no hope for something better, especially since I do have something better-hope for a life outside this flesh that draws us closer to death with every passing breath.  I can offer her life in the spirit that rises above all the hell of this world.  

It is only when we embrace the love Jesus offered us on that cross that we can be anything more than the filth of the life around us.  This same sweet promise applies to us all-from the privileged white man residing in a white house to the colored man kneeling on the grass.  We are all victims of the flesh who desperately need to choose to live life in the spirit and be a different kind of victim-a victim of love.

My Alabastard

Allah-bastard of my youth

Teenage angst of sorrow

Speak not love

Dream not of me

Traitor of my youth

Fallen angel from high divine

Mere Mortal, You fell

Hard upon my soul

Crowning you king

O’er my virgin Mother Mary

Perfumed sanctuary

Loves fertile soil

Remembrance of my youth

Times healing balms

Befuddled misplaced divinity

Claims my sin

Resurrected ashes of youth

We are not to blame

Freely take

My Alabaster Jar

A Princess in the Making

When I was a little girl, I dreamt of my prince.  He would come to me, a humble nobody and place his firm hand gently in the small of my back.  I would feel the warmth of his breathe close to my face as my heart would flutter and my head would swim trying to steady my legs while breathlessness whisked me toward a life I could only dream about.  He would bend down, brush his hand across my cheek, and rescue me from a mundane life of toil and misery.  

The dream never came true.  For a long time I relinquished to the idea that it never would.

Today is our anniversary.  Sixteen years ago I stood at the altar in my white dress and swore to love.  That love has been hard to muster at times.  

But still I love, perhaps more today than ever, but not because of anything that is in me or anything that is in you.  Today I love more because God first loved me.  And as I come ever increasingly into His arms, I have begun to realize that Jesus is the only bridegroom that can rescue.  And we two, we are just simple, sinful human messes.  We hurt each other.  We neglect each other.  We forget to realize the other has needs.  We fall into each other only to grow selfish and fall out into a spiraling web of frustration.

Before we married, God spoke very clearly to me that He intended for me to marry you.  It is that voice alone that has at times carried me through.  But as I sit here 16 years into this, I realize truth to all of this.  

When we first married, I thought we were a match made in Heaven.  I mean, God had actually told me that, right?  But now I realize that was my pretentious lie.  We were never the perfect match made in heaven.  You like it messy.  I like it neat.  You prefer blunt.  I prefer polite.  You speak your mind.  I harbor my secrets.  You love the farm.  I love the city.  But in our boots and pearls colliding, we have still somehow found beauty in it all, and it is for that reason that although we may not be a match made in Heaven, we are a match made for Heaven.  God brought us together to grow us each individually closer to Him as we struggle to find a balance in us so we can live a life together that draws others closer to Him.  I know so clearly now that if you had been my prince, I would have never sought the real one.  

So thank you for your imperfections.  Thank you for continuing to be the rock foundation at the center of my core raging with emotions, to calm me and bring me back to who God needs me to be.  Thank you for being an amazing Father and a Godly husband.  Thank you for sixteen years of leading me closer to the only one who can make me a princess.   For in that, you are my knight in shining armor, a warrior for the King.

A Letter: From a Christian Teacher to the Secular Student

My Dearest Student,

I wish it were time to let you know that if I weren’t your teacher, my voice would sound much different. But for now, for this time and space, I will hold on to the noise that reverberates through my being, the one that wants to speak loudly into your life, because for now I am your teacher and all I can do is hope that somehow what I can say and what I can do today finds a way into the corner of your mind so that one of these days, when you start to clear out the cobwebs towards clarity, you will hear me.  

I will sound different then.  More like the real me.  And I will speak what I really wanted you to know all along. But for now, I will just hope I can show what I so earnestly wish to tell.

To tell you that I see you.  I see the struggle in your eyes and the anxiety in your heart.

To tell you that I understand you.  Believe it or not, I was once your age, walking the dimmed streets of shadows.

To tell you you are worth it.  You are worth every night I sacrifice time with my own family to help you grow in knowledge and in truth.  You are worth every gray hair from deeply contemplating how I could best reach into your heart when I have such limited time each day to whisper some sense of the meaning of life.  

To tell you that I love you . . . not because you are lovable.  None of us are.  But because I have a Savior whose Spirit lives in me, I can know the Truth and it does set me free.  Free to love you even when you miss the mark.  Because we all miss the mark.  But here is where I hope my voice speaks loud and clear, because vague walls build dangerous hearts.  

I believe in God the Father.  I believe in Jesus Christ.  I believe in the Holy Spirit.  I believe in the infallible Word of God.  And I believe in TRUTH.  Not my version of it, but the only real Truth that I believe exists, and please trust me that I have earnestly sought the world over for these seeds.  And because I hold firmly to that Truth, I see how my choices separate me from God’s love, and that great chasm is vast array of utter loneliness, and I don’t want you to be alone.  

So when you trust me enough to ask really hard questions, I have a really hard time not answering. But for now, I am your teacher and jaded avoidance breaks my heart, but I know not what else to do, not because I fear what may happen to me, but because I fear what might happen in you prematurely.  Sometimes, the hardest questions have to wait for a different time.  A time when you can hear me clearly, without those damned walled hearts.  To know that when I consider it a sin, it is because I am building my life on God’s Truth.  To know that it really is possible to love you even in the midst of your sin, fully for who you are, but wishing desperately you would walk with me, as I too am fighting my way up from the pit of me.  

Will you have grown enough when you hear me to be able to love like this?  To allow me to still sit at your table of confidence, even when our worldviews collide?  Isn’t that what true acceptance means? Not that I can accept only those who are like-minded, but that I can invite all to the table where we meet to think.  And will you then be able to think deeply, and widely, and openly enough to entertain other ideas, sharpening your mind against the edge, and all the while truly maintaining love in spite of our differing selves?  For if you think back really hard, this is the lesson I tried to teach all along.

But for now I will love you through the silence, because though I desperately wish I could speak, I am still your teacher.  In time, my voice will change, and I will wait because I understand seasons differently than you do.   And I will hope.  I will pray for the day you can hear me clearly.  But on that day, please don’t look at my age and assume I am archaically outdated.  Even age needs company who will listen to the noise inside.

Deeply and Earnestly,

Your Teacher

The View from Below

It has been one of those years.

Actually, if I am really honest, it started three years ago with a drought.  And although God sent adequate rain to the crops for the next years, my heart remained dry.  

Have you ever had one of those journeys in life where God has clearly asked you into something, but the farther you walk through that door, the more doors behind you start to shut, and if you are really honest, you rather liked those rooms and cringe every time you hear the slam because you are not sure what to do with the seemingly empty voids left behind now that you can no longer go there.  

For the past year, I have sat removed from those doors and shed bitter tears, frustrated with God because He would not let me go back, back to where I felt comfortable, back to where I felt needed, back to where I felt safe, back to where life was good.  And it has been a very dry season.  A constant battle between my head and my heart.  My head would say read and study and fill yourself with God’s promises, but my heart would cry out against me because my will was not aligning with God’s.  

Lots of questions.  What is my purpose?  I have no ministry, no direction.  And as I wandered aimlessly, my heart followed, starting to question everything, trying to fill the void in my heart with fallen family, forcing them up on a cross to be my savior only to be reminded that they too never belong on that pedestal; only one man has ever walked this earth who earned the right to bear that place for the sake of saving my dry and crackling heart.

And in the meantime, Satan snuck in for the attack, shaking foundations in my life that had never been shaken before, hurling more and more questions at my wounded soul.  Are you really loved?  Are you really worth it?  Don’t you know how ugly your soul is?  Don’t you know you’ve missed out on all the things you could’ve become?  And pride peeped in, begging an invitation to consider the flawed suggestions.  

A better crack.  A friend who keeps praying and won’t let me remain hidden in the depths of my pit.  A student who shares and invites me to do the same.  A song, a friend.  

Confession: I have forced myself Sunday after Sunday to go to a place that only stirred very deep resentment; bad enough You closed the doors, but do You have to parade me past them week after week to remind me of what you took.

Remember.  Since the beginning of creation You have asked Your people to remember, because You alone know what is truly good.  And You are reminding me that pretending the scars aren’t there will not make them go away.  You take away, but you also give.

Trust.  Trust that when You have closed a door, it is only because You have a much better one in store.  But . . . always a but. . . . the struggle is the point.  Face the frustration knowing You are still in control, and You really do have the Best plan in mind for me.

Funny thing happened this summer.  The rain seems to never cease.  Three years ago a drought hit and my heart began to dry, and for years I have been begging God on one hand to just speak up and tell me something, anything, all while my heart began to harden against hearing.

The rains came down.  Sunday after Sunday this summer I have sat in church and wept.  My heart is far from good, but God is good, even when I am not.  

You are good, You are good, when there’s nothing good in me.  I would love to say I’m running to Your arms, but I’m not.  It's more of a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other climbing out to the ground above so I can plant my feet on solid ground just long enough to fall on my knees, crying out to You to please forgive me.  

I have been wandering, and I want to be found in Your ways alone.  I want to hear the truth to those questions, to know You Love Me, because You think I am worth it enough to send Your Son to die for me.  To know you make beauty from the ashes of my burnt out soul and whatever I have missed out on is nothing compared to what You have in store.

I am ready to Touch the Sky.  It seems too far away in this wallowed pit.

The Cover Red

I was listening to Daily Audio Bible this morning and he was reading from Genesis.  The story is far from novel for me.  Eve is tempted by the serpent.  She then gets Adam to eat as well.  Then they suddenly have knowledge of good and evil and are ashamed and cover themselves, which is how God finds them.  Nothing new in the story, but I am humbled once again by God’s reminder that his Word is alive and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, and it brings newness to a soul seeking fresh life.

The first idea I had never thought of was Adam’s lack of standing against Satan.  According to the scripture, he is right there?  Why doesn’t he speak up for his wife?  Why doesn’t he tell Satan to get the heck out of dodge and quit leading his wife astray.  If someone were to come along and try to seduce me right in front of Daniel, I certainly hope he would man up and do something, anything about it.  But Adam does nothing; well, actually he does do something-he joins in.  It’s as if Satan is asking Eve to come play with him and Adam says why don't we all join in?  What?  

And then I started thinking about how important that tree is.  The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Certainly Adam and Eve knew good before they ate of this tree because they were living in complete harmony with not only God’s creation, but with God himself-forever in his presence.  Maybe they didn’t have knowledge that this was good since they had no concept of evil to contrast, but still, they experienced good 24/7.  What would that be like?  I am not certain any of us on earth can even comprehend that.  Even our good is shadowed by the phantom of evil ever lurking around the corner.  So maybe the lesson is we can never fully know much less appreciate good until we have encountered evil?  

We as humans became our own gods.  We now know good and evil and can only become right with the epitome of good, God himself, when we choose wisely.  A choice necessitates options.  The tree suddenly enabled options.  But the option was there before which enabled the choice.  Opt to obey or opt to disobey.  They choose unwisely and that choice led to a knowledge they didn’t really want; none of us really want to know evil.  When it sneaks into our homes, when it pries into our hearts, it wreaks unfathomable misery that only God can heal.

Only God can heal; only God can restore the great chasm that now exists.  When Adam and Eve ate, they heard God walking and they hid to cover themselves.  They suddenly knew shame as it filled their soul with isolation.  Because isn’t that what shame does.  It drives us away to a place of cover, like a game of hide and go seek gone bad because we become so lost we are never found.  The masks of facade we persist in raising in the ball of our masquerade to achieve a status for all to see that doesn’t come close to revealing who we really are, much less how much we really need Jesus, or how much we need others who also need Jesus.  But with our human frailty and flesh, we become monsters of our own closets, slapping a pretty picture on the door so no one suspects what lurks beyond. Why do we do THIS?????!!!!  Because with our knowledge of good and evil, we know we are evil.  We know we will never measure up.  We know we are naked and God can see every last inch of us and we would much rather put on some leaves and pretend God doesn’t really see us for who we are.  BUT HE DOES.  He always does.  He knows every last inch of my shameful soul and yet He Loves?  What?

Some days I love my covers.  I love to wrap underneath them and feel like life is okay because I played the part well and reached the end of the hour to hear the applause.  But some days, oh some days, I grow very weary of the facade.  I want to strip the leaves away and proclaim to the world that I too am a failure.  I too fall flat on my face.  I too live in the shame of my sin and can never measure up.  And I too just want to let it all out on the table before Him who already knows it all anyway and say Here am I.  Will you still claim me?  Will you still call me Your own?  Will you still pick me up into your Daddy arms and whisper in my ear that You, You-the God of the Universe, the creator of the stars and the mountains and the seas and the beauty that fills my nostrils on a warm, new spring day-You love me?  Will you love my selfishness?  Will You love my anger?  Will you love my deep, dark need for worldly acceptance?

And I hear you say no.  I will not love your selfishness.  I will not love your anger.  I will not love your deep, dark need for fleeting status.

But. . .

I will love you.  I will love you enough to lift you out of your selfishness.  I will love you enough to rise you above your anger.  And I will love you enough to give you a new name, my name.  And then I will take you on a wild ride through this life, a great adventure.  But always remember, I AM.  

I am the one who can reveal who you are.  But I cannot reveal you in your mirror of self-reflection if you insist on keeping your covers on.

The covers of Adam and Eve must go.  No more hiding from God’s presence in shame.  For when we step out into the light, His light, HE will make a cover for us to conceal our shame.  In the garden, it was made of skins.  But that covering was only temporary.   He knew we needed time before he gave us the ultimate covering.  The blanket of dripping red.

A Humble Heart's Cry

Dearest Father,

You are moving in my soul.  And it is well.  So I stand before you and say I am a mess.  I have harbored bitterness and unforgiveness because I felt betrayed and lost and alone and unloved.  But you have called me out of my pit.  You have lifted me out of my darkness.  And you are beautiful, absolutely beautiful.  So I stand in your presence and say I love you.  I love you for how you love me.  I love you for being the God of greatness.  I love you for being the God of grace.  I love you for looking at all my ugliness and saying you will still choose to make me into something beautiful.  And I can never understand why.  Why would you love me?  Why would you see me?  Why do you continue to pour your Spirit into my breath and soul and grant me glimpses of Your Greatness.  

Oh, God.  You are.  And I will hold onto that promise until one day when I get to see you once again.  I will believe that you have so much more promised for me.  I believe You are God and you reign on high and yet you still love me.  me.  

Move in me.  Move me out of my wretched lukewarm.  I do not want to be out of your presence for a moment, so set my heart on fire.  And love me.  For when you fill me with your love, then I  am love.  And on that day when I stand in your presence and all those i’ve left behind stand on earth, may they have caught a glimpse of your love through my meager efforts to reflect your light.  

break me down.  bring me to my knees.  take out of me anything that is not of you.  make me more and more like you.  to be a light to my children.  so they too can become lights for your kingdom.  so they too can serve you and obey you with all their beings.

You are good.  You are light.  I love you greatly.

humbly yours,

lesa